Community Health and Wellness Department takes part in Healthcare Career Day at Camp Harbor View

At Camp Harbor View, hundreds of children from Boston get the chance to enjoy simple summer fun. The camp, located on Long Island in Boston Harbor, offers boating, arts, athletics, music and aquatics. And, each summer, it also offers campers the chance to start planning for their futures with Healthcare Career Day.

Partners HealthCare has been a sponsor of the camp since it began in 2007. Healthcare Career Day at Camp Harbor View is designed to introduce kids to health professionals and their careers. The students rotate through different stations, each run by a different Partners institution, that focus on the various careers within healthcare and health in general. This year, Community Health and Wellness Assistant Katie Plante and Outpatient and Community Liaison Dietitian Allie Lang, RD, LDN, represented Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital.

Plante and Lang were on hand to teach the kids about healthy snacking by letting the kids make their own trail mixes with raisins, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and granola. The BWFH team talked to the kids about how each ingredient helps the body, and then let them choose what they wanted in their mix.

“We had a really great time at Camp Harbor View,” says Plante. “They are always so welcoming to us, and I love talking to the kids about what foods they like to eat.”

For Lang, the day was also very enjoyable. “My favorite moment was when a camper asked how healthy fats are good for your nervous system and we got into a discussion about how the nerves and spinal cord work,” she says. “Many campers were trying some of these foods for the first time. One camper tried dried cranberries for the first time and asked for extra in his trail mix because he loved them so much. Another camper asked how fiber helps with digestion and that was both interesting and hilarious to explain to middle schoolers!”